


how long it's been since yesterday

by kirkaut



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, Kingsman: The Golden Circle Spoilers, M/M, semi fix it fic, tilde and eggsy don't get back together, y'all ever listen to john denver and just fuckin....cry........
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 08:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirkaut/pseuds/kirkaut
Summary: He's lost almost everyone, but he thinks that if he lost Harry, too - if he lost Harryagain- there'd be nothing left of Eggsy to go on.





	how long it's been since yesterday

If there's one thing about country music that Eggsy can appreciate, it's that it certainly knows how to set the mood. He won't ever have Merlin’s enthusiasm for guitar picking and twanging voices, but he's got to admit that the sad song playing in the Statesmen saloon seems perfectly in sync with his miserable soul.

He recognizes it from the stringently enforced country-western education Merlin had given him during their journey from England to Kentucky; a quiet, mournful thing created for the singer’s dying wife. _John Denver_ , Merlin had said his name was, with the sort of reverential air most people reserved for The Beatles or Beyoncé.

Eggsy tips the glass of amber whiskey down his throat and barely winces at the taste. The burn of liquor sliding past his tongue and landing in his stomach is nothing compared to the searing headache he’s developed, the result of suppressing his emotions for nearly a week straight. He's not even sure which is responsible for making his vision swim.

The past few days have been hell, dark and burning. His skin feels raw and flayed, his nerves exposed and his soul battered beyond recognition.

He can’t think about Roxy without the immediate, violent turn of his stomach and the bite of tears at his eyes. Can’t think about Brandon without guilt threatening to swallow him whole, feeling about as directly responsible for his death as the missile that blew the house in Stanhope Mews to a pile of rubble.

JB will never grin at him again, never wiggle his way under the covers on a cold night, congested snores rumbling up from the lump he'd created. Eggsy misses him viscerally, more than he had ever imagined he could when he'd first plucked the wriggling little beast out of a kennel.

He misses Tilde, but at least she's alive. No longer his, maybe, but alive and safe and far away from the disaster Eggsy’s life has wrought. He had loved her - still does - but in the aftermath of the last few days, he thinks he would much rather have her be broken hearted and alive than another casualty of the Golden Circle.

And then there’s Harry.

Harry, who doesn't remember him. Harry, who's soft and slouches and speaks with all the gentleness of a schoolboy. He's quiet, that's stayed the same, but it's in a way that's different from before. The Harry who pulled Eggsy from a life of slumming it had always been watchful, calculating; holding his cards close to his chest until the moment called for them to be dealt.

This Harry was quiet in a way that spoke of shyness, of someone who had yet to learn himself so thoroughly that confidence was a second skin. This was a Harry that Eggsy didn't know at all, but he was Harry all the same.

And Eggsy would be damned if he let him slip through his fingers once more, no matter how defeated he'd felt stepping out of that padded room and no matter how many handshakes goodbye had been shared between them.

He's lost almost everyone (his mum and Daisy are blessedly, mercifully safe and sound) but he thinks that if he lost Harry, too - if he lost Harry _again_ \- there'd be nothing left of Eggsy to go on.

Something cold lances through his stomach at the thought. He shakes his head and unlocks his phone, unsurprised but no less dismayed to see Tilde has yet to respond to his messages. He orders another Kentucky martini after downing the remains of the first, wishing the burn of the liquor could combat the icy hopelessness that's settled into his bones.

He's more than proven himself as a Kingsman in the last year, has successfully completed mission after mission and has the scars and newspapers to show for it. So why is it that he can't fathom saving the world without Harry by his side, now that he's back within reach?

Why is it that, even though it was mere hours ago that he was telling Tilde ( _placating her,_ a treacherous voice in his head whispers) that he wanted to spend his life with her, he's filled with more dread at having to let Harry go?

He's afraid of losing her, he can't deny it. She's been his rock the past year, there for him when his grief has been nigh on overwhelming. She's perfect, bloody amazing; soft kisses and late night talks and a puppy because she knows how much he loved JB. Tilde is more than he ever thought that he deserved, and he's never wanted anything more than to keep her happy.

And yet he's sitting in a bar, freshly broken up with and nursing a drink, listening to a man sing about the love of his life, and all he can think about is Harry Hart.

He knows why. He's always known why the specter of Harry had seemed unshakable, why he'd been unable to bear the thought of pulling down any of Harry’s decor and had done little more to the house in the Mews other than change the bed sheets. He knows why he'd wished Tilde could have met him, but been more privately, wretchedly glad that he'd had Harry to himself, if only for a short while.

But it's been a fucking rough day, never mind the past week, and he really can't think about all of that right now.

He flicks through the photos on his phone, staring at pictures of Tilde with a baleful sort of determination, and hates that he only really feels his heart wrench when he stops at the first picture that includes JB’s snubby grin.

Tears prickle at his eyes and sting at the bridge of his nose. Fuck, but he loved that little arsehole so much. JB had been so much of who Eggsy was now, had been the sort of blindly affectionate and loyal thing he'd needed when it had felt like him against the world. He can't believe it sometimes, when he thinks back to how he started out so resentful of having to lug the pup around, and within a matter of months had been willing to throw away the single greatest opportunity of his life just to keep JB safe.

Something flickers in the back of his mind. He pulls his gaze away from his phone, chasing the thought, and finds his eyes landing on a small statue of a dog perched on the bar top.

Harry's voice echoes through his brain, a year old but no less biting. _It was a fucking blank._

He thinks of Mr. Pickle’s watchful gaze, how he'd been preserved and perched with care and tenderness.

He's seen the footage of Ginger and Merlin trying to traumatize Harry into regaining his memories. He'd nearly been sick at the sight of it, felt bile rise in his throat when Harry had begun screaming underwater, precious oxygen bubbling up around his head and bringing him one second closer to drowning.

Sick certainty meets Eggsy’s sheer determination, and it's with fingers that are only slightly hesitant that he searches for the nearest pet store.

He knows what he has to do.

 

~

 

The puppy is a warm, sleepy weight in the palm of his hand, having worn itself out with its happy licks and sheer joy at being freed from the too-small confines of its pet store cage. If Eggsy wasn’t a man on a mission, he’s certain he wouldn’t have been able to walk out of that store with any less than ten dogs. As it were, he’s only got the one, and he busses an apologetic kiss across the top of its small, soft head.

He won’t let anything bad happen to this pup - couldn’t bear it, not so soon after JB and not when it’s blinking up at him with limpid, liquid eyes - but he knows he’s about to scare the hell out of it, and Harry.

It’s been well over a year since his own botched attempt at the dog test, since Harry shouted at him in the foyer and they poetically parted ways in the shitter, but Eggsy’s feelings about the dog test haven’t changed. It’s cruel, for one, and not a bit psychologically fucked to think you’re about to shoot a creature with no agency other than to trust you blindly, but needs - horrific as they might be - must.

“It’s all gonna be alright,” he murmurs into the puppy’s fur, its ear flicking against his nose. “Don’t you worry, mate. Everything will be fixed soon.”

Merlin sees him coming down the hallway and stops in mid conversation with Ginger Ale when he takes notice of the sleepy bundle in Eggsy’s hands. Even from a couple meters away, Eggsy can see the way Merlin’s throat bobs as he swallows hard before giving Eggsy a firm, approving nod.

Ginger Ale turns and cocks her head when she notices the puppy, but as she opens her mouth to no doubt ask Eggsy what he’s doing, Merlin keeps her silent with a hand on her arm. He tilts his head toward the observation room, and to her credit she follows with only a single worried look back.

The door opens for Eggsy easily, a soft hydraulic hiss guiding him into the dark room Harry’s had to call home for twelve long months. The lights rise quickly but smoothly to their usual fluorescent glory. Despite their nearly painful brightness, it takes a moment to penetrate the sleeping mask Harry’s got strapped across his eyes, and then he’s scrambling awake.

Eggsy’s heart aches at the way Harry’s eye goes wide with fear, how his forehead crumples and his knees jolt up to create a barrier between them.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, getting the words out around the lump in his throat. “S’alright, yeah? Just wanted to stop in and give you a lil’ going away present.” He lifts the puppy further into the light, smiling reassuringly at Harry.

The little dog yawns against Eggsy’s chest, and Harry’s wariness dissipates immediately. His posture softens, and his eyes are fixated on the pup as Eggsy slowly approaches and tucks him into Harry’s arms.

Their hands touch as the dog passes between them. Harry’s grin is a wide open thing, so thoughtlessly expressive, and it makes him look as young as he believes himself to be. Eggsy wants to keep that smile on his face, wants to watch that transformation over and over. He wants that scant brush of fingers to linger.

But the gun is a heavy weight in his pocket, and this is his last chance at getting Harry back.

“Sweet, ain’t he?” Eggsy asks, voice pitched low and whispery, eyes intent on where the puppy is nuzzling into Harry’s face and licking at his chin. Harry is focused entirely on the dog, muttering nonsense under his breath as he cuddles it close, and it gives Eggsy the perfect opportunity to raise the gun.

The gun feels like it weighs a hundred pounds in his sweaty palm, but his aim is steady and sure. “Think I should shoot him?”

This time when Harry startles away from him, Eggsy completely understands.

He backs the man into a padded corner, waving the gun at the both of them but careful to keep his finger far from the trigger. The safety’s on, besides, but this version of Harry isn’t likely to see anything other than the barrel of a gun.

“Are you out of your mind?!” Harry shouts, turning his body so that his shoulder is shielding the dog, his one good eye flickering in a panic between the weapon and Eggsy’s determined, stony face. “Nobody would shoot a dog!”

“You did!” Eggsy shouts. His voice crackles against the words, but he forges on. “Don’t you remember, Harry? Mr. Pickle! Don’t you remember?”

“What?” Harry gasps, breaths coming in hard, short bursts. His gaze darts up and around, mouth trembling in fear as he hyperventilates, hand coming up to protect himself against an invisible attacker.

He starts muttering something under his breath, and it takes a moment for Eggsy to realize he’s saying _‘butterflies, butterflies’_ over and over. It’s a long and painful few minutes of watching Harry cower and cry, but Eggsy holds fast, emboldened by the evidence that his plan just might be working.

All of a sudden, Harry’s head snaps up. “It was a blank!” he shouts, opening his body up but still clutching his newest acquisition tight. “It was a fucking blank!”

The relief, as it sweeps through Eggsy, is almost paralyzing. “Yes, yes, Harry!” he shouts back, encouraging. He takes a step forward, gesticulating with the gun for Harry to continue, and can’t hold back the smile that starts to take shape when Harry doesn’t shy away.

“I would never hurt Mr. Pickle!” Harry seethes, drawing himself up to nearly his full height. “He lived for years until died from pancreatitis at the ripe old age of - ” He cuts himself off, breathing hard and sweating lightly at the temples, and peers down at the puppy that’s clutched tightly to him. “You aren’t Mr. Pickle,” he says dumbly, but his thumb still strokes reverently down the space between its ears.

His gaze lifts and finds Eggsy’s. His shoulders straighten out, his stance shifts subtly, and the subtle way his mouth lifts at the corners feels like a guiding beacon home.

“Eggsy,” he says, tone touched with warmth and disbelief, and the wretched ball of agony that’s been living in Eggsy’s chest since he realized Harry had no idea who he was, finally unwinds.

“Harry,” he chokes, tossing the gun onto Harry’s makeshift bed and striding forward.

It’s a bit awkward, with Harry still cradling the puppy between them, but Eggsy wraps both his arms around Harry’s neck, tips up onto his toes, and gets as close as he can manage. A beat passes, then two, before Harry reciprocates with a hesitant arm around Eggsy’s back. He clutches Harry tighter and closes his eyes, burying his nose into the other man’s shoulder and doing his best to fight back the sobs that are building up behind his sternum.

Harry’s touch grows firmer, more responsive, and his fingers dig into the space between Eggsy’s shoulder blades as he leans into the touch. His head tilts into Eggsy’s, close enough that Eggsy can hear the shaky exhalation that escapes from his nose, no matter how quiet Harry tries to keep the sigh.

The embrace goes on for a long moment, but even as Harry pulls back Eggsy wants to reel him in again to keep the feeling of Harry, tangible and real beneath his fingers, for even longer.

“Eggsy,” Harry says, hand slipping from the cradle of his back to grip tightly at his bicep. “Valentine must be stopped, he has a device - ”

“Shh, hey, hey,” Eggsy soothes, his own hands sliding to rest against Harry’s shoulders. When that doesn’t seem to calm him, he can’t suppress the urge to curve his fingers around the tense line of Harry’s jaw. His thumbs sweep across the stubble and the wrinkles that bend their way around Harry’s distressed frown. “It’s alright, yeah? It’s been taken care of.” His mouth curls up into a reassuring smile, ducking his head to meet Harry’s gaze as best he can. “You’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Harry closes his eye, brow furrowing, and takes deep and careful breaths through his nose. Eggsy watches closely, taking advantage of Harry’s distraction to sweep a careful, reverent gaze over his features.

He looks wan and tired, grey hairs sprouting at his hairline that weren’t there the last time Eggsy’d laid eyes on him. He looks thin, but that’s to be expected following a year of recovery confined to a small, padded room, and the lack of regimented Kingsman training. There are new wrinkles beside his eyes, a hint of scar tissue peeking up from behind the eye patch.

This is a new Harry; not as severe as the one Eggsy used to know, but nowhere near as soft as the youthful lepidopterist of only moments ago. This is a Harry that’s a combination of the two, a Harry that Eggsy doesn’t fully know yet, but fuck, he loves him madly.

When Harry’s breaths have evened out and he seems calmer, Eggsy begins to draw his hands away. Fast as anything, grip tight as a vice, Harry’s hand binds itself around his wrist. His eye snaps open and focuses forward, his mouth a grim line in his face.

“Eggsy, I must apologize,” he says, simultaneously stilted and rushed. “I said some truly horrendous things to you - ”

“No, don’t,” Eggsy interrupts, thumb drawing a line over Harry’s cheek once more. “I forgave you a long time ago for that, bruv, ain’t no need.”

“Let me finish,” Harry demands, grip growing tighter. Eggsy bites down on his reassurances, lips pursing as he nods for Harry to go on. He lets the hand that isn’t behind held in place drop down, palm pressing into Harry’s chest, feeling the reassuring thump and bass of his heart beating. “Perhaps it’s been a year for you, but it was only yesterday for me.”

Eggsy stays silent and watches the bob of Harry’s throat as he swallows. The puppy tilts upwards and licks at the underside of his wrist.

“You are your own man, Eggsy,” Harry continues, voice subdued. “A remarkable one, whom I...whom I am so proud of. And it was...cruel of me, to diminish all of your accomplishments and sully your father’s memory, only because I was angry.” Eggsy’s mouth opens, but Harry’s fingers squeeze, and he shuts it with a click. “I hope you can accept my apology, though I find it difficult to believe I’ll ever find the words to do one justice.”

He releases his hold on Eggsy’s hand, but it stays in place.

The build up of emotion proves to be too much for Eggsy. Those first few months after V-Day, after Harry died, he’d imagined this sort of conversation so many times. Had dreamed of them hashing it out between them, of shouted words and reconciliation, but the reality of Harry standing before him, contrite and silently awaiting judgment, is something he thinks he could never have possibly prepared for. It’s an unprecedented moment of warmth, of something familiar and beloved, in the midst of a week where all Eggsy has felt is pain and loss, and it catches him directly in the chest.

“You,” he starts, but loses the rest to a hitching sob. He reels himself in for another hug, more desperate than the last, hand sliding from Harry’s face to bury itself in his hair. The other fists into the neck of Harry’s jumper, clinging tight and holding on.

Harry’s arm finds its way around his waist this time, the warm expanse of his palm settling on the curve of Eggsy’s hip.

Eggsy draws back only when the heat between their bodies begins to feel stifling, nose dragging along Harry’s jaw. He stretches up onto the balls of his feet and tilts his forehead against Harry’s, eyes still closed as he breathes in the clean scent of his shampoo and aftershave. “I missed you,” he whispers fiercely. “Every fucking day, man.”

“I missed you, too,” Harry murmurs. And though he’s only just regained his memories, and to him it’s only been a day since they last parted, Eggsy knows he’s telling the truth.

The puppy nestles in between them and yawns, at peace once more.

 

~

 

The thought that Harry could ever have betrayed him sits like a fetid, rotting thing in the back of his mind all the while that they’re storming the gates to Poppyland. Harry moves fluidly, perfectly in sync with Eggsy’s every motion, saving his arse more than once as quickly as a reflex. It becomes clear enough that Harry’s always got Eggsy in his limited sight, and will always manipulate the situation to keep Eggsy safe from any seemingly inescapable harm.

They move like a unit, like a song; almost choreographed for all that their fighting is seamless. Eggsy can’t believe he ever doubted this, ever doubted that Harry would have his back even in the most unlikely and dire of circumstances.

Lack of depth perception aside, Harry’s fighting with the same poise, grace, and ruthless savagery that Eggsy’s seen from him in the past, adapting easily to the modifications made to his umbrella and Eggsy’s own gymnastic fighting style. He’s professional, clinical, critical, and Eggsy feels sick to his fucking stomach that he had ever lost faith.

It’d been so awful, thinking Harry wasn’t all the way back the way he’d seemed, that there was something still not quite right about him, that the butterflies were taking the place of good judgement. It had been fear, Eggsy realizes, that had left him shouting at Harry in a cabin, Whiskey laid out on the floor before them. Fear that Harry was actually lost for good, stuck in a limbo between different versions of who he once was, never again to be the man that Eggsy knew.

But, as they duck and cover and protect each other from Poppy’s goons, Eggsy knows that this is his Harry, bullets and butterflies and all. He finds the proof of it in the way that Harry slides onto his knees beside him and ejects a bola from the tip of his umbrella, wrangling the three grenades that are headed his way. Finds it in the way Harry immediately shields him from debris, and feels it in the press of their palms together as Harry offers him a hand up.

Eggsy takes it, and they’re drawn close together at the end of the motion, Harry’s umbrella still held aloft between them. Adrenaline fixes itself to the walls of Eggsy’s heart, sheer bloody joy clamoring alongside the satisfaction of a battle hard fought and won, and it’s pure, uninhibited instinct that has him grabbing at Harry’s lapels and hauling him in for a bruising, searing kiss.

Harry’s mouth is a surprised moue against his own for only a split second before his lips are parting and his hand is cradling the back of Eggsy’s skull, tongue dipping skillfully inside the seam of Eggsy’s lips.

It’s heated, ferocious, and a long time coming. Perhaps a bit ill timed, considering the way the world is falling apart around them, Eggsy is barely on the other side of a long term relationship, and Harry is only recently back on his feet, but he can’t bring himself to regret it.

They pull apart with a soft, wet noise, both of them breathing heavily in the still-settling dust of the ruins. Eggsy smoothes his hands down Harry’s lapel. “Later,” he promises, clogged thick with emotion.

“Indeed,” Harry agrees, pressing a thumb to the swell of Eggsy’s bottom lip before pulling away and stepping back. “To be continued. For now, what’s say you and I save the world?”

Eggsy grins at him and cocks his gun. “I thought you’d never ask, bruv.”

Both of their gazes move to the retro front of Poppy’s Diner, weapons at the ready and shoulders drawn back.

Together, they move forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *kicks down your door* SO HOW ABOUT THAT KINGSMAN
> 
> i needed to write this little teensy weensy fix it fic after seeing the movie twice. i'm planning on writing a complete overhaul a la 'dig in your fingers' but until then, i wanted to put this out there to tide me over. i really, really enjoyed TGC but like what the fuck man
> 
> title from the song 'poems, prayers and promises' by, you guessed it, john denver


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